Alexander Whyte was the greatest preacher of his day in Scotland. Few preachers have done so much to heighten the ideals of the pulpit, and the instruction and inspiration to be derived from his life-story are many-sided. With all his tenderness and humility, his freedom from egoism and self-concern, Whyte stands in the direct line of the Hebrew prophets. The lightnings and thunders of Sinai flash and burst over all his work as he addressed himself to the consciences of his hearers.

He was born at Kirriemuir on January 13, 1836. When only twelve he said to his mother, "I'm going to be a minister." In his college days he wrote to a friend, "I'm reading like a famished wolf." After four years as assistant minister in Glasgow he was called in 1870 to become a colleague of Dr. Candlish at Free St. George's, Edinburgh. In his first sermon he said: "Whatever I am to bring here of strength or endowment or attainment or experience, be they great or small, by God's grace, I shall consecrate myself to the instant pursuit of the one work of saving myself and them that hear me."

Three years later Candlish died and Whyte became sole minister. His preaching from the first combined the note of intellectual massiveness with that of spiritual warmth. The moral appeal in his preaching was its outstanding mark. He brought doctrine to bear on the sternest facts of life. He lived in the life of eternity and struck home to the deep places of the conscience.

Dr. James Black, his successor, when asked what special qualities lay behind Whyte's pulpit work said that he had two virtues that help to explain how his bow abode in strength over such a long a continuous ministry. The first was that he was a glutton for work, which was ordered and planned a long time ahead. He was at his desk, pencil in hand, by eight o'clock on Monday morning, and his work was so planned that Saturday was practically a free day. He could forgive any sin in the ministry but laziness.

He was a student until the day he died. He read widely and always made notes as he read. Whyte's second virtue was that in everything he tried to do he was content to be himself. He used to the full every gift God had given him. He put every ounce of strength into every effort. He used his imagination in dealing with Bible characters until he ended by thinking in pictures.

Roberston Nicoll, in a memorial tribute to Whyte, said: "What struck the listener first was his intense earnestness. There was fire in him. At his best his sermons were wonderful for their pure, true, genuine eloquence. They made a mighty impression. He had an absorbing belief in the power of the pulpit. He failed in no activity but the pulpit was his throne."

Whyte himself said: "The pulpit is a jealous mistress and will not brook a divided allegiance." Morning, noon and night, his Bible was in his hands. The morning hours were sacred to study. After lunch he went out on his pastoral rounds; he once said to a younger minister he could not preach under a thousand visits a year. The evenings were spent at meetings or in the study. His was a life unhasting, unresting and as one said of him, "his industry was more than half his genius."